Chapter 12
TWELVE
WYATT
The silence stretched for five full seconds before Delos broke it.
“Well,” the fire dragon raised his beer in a mock toast, “welcome to the club. We have jackets. They’re soft.”
“We don’t have jackets.” Theo’s tone was dry.
“We should have jackets. ‘Haven Shores Mated Males’. With little embroidered fangs.”
“I’m not mated.” Wyatt’s protest came out weak, even to his own ears.
“Not yet.” Delos’s rumble held grim amusement. “But you will be. The bond’s already forming. I can smell it on you—that pull, that awareness. You know where she is right now, don’t you? Without looking, without checking. You just… know.”
Wyatt’s hand clenched around his beer glass.
He did know. She was at her cottage—he’d felt her presence settle there an hour ago, a distant beacon at the edge of his awareness. Some part of him was straining toward her even as he sat in this booth pretending to be fine.
“Yeah.” Beck nodded at whatever he saw in Wyatt’s expression. “That’s how it starts. Gets stronger the longer you resist it. By the time I stopped fighting and just accepted what Rosemary was to me, I could track her across continents.”
“Romantic.” Delos grinned. “In a stalkerish kind of way.”
“Says the dragon who literally followed Aero around the Continental Council archives for three decades.”
“That was professional development.”
“That was obsession with extra steps.”
“Gentlemen.” Theo’s quiet authority cut through the bickering. “Perhaps we could focus on the more pressing issue. Wyatt’s mate recognition is his business. But the surge affecting his judgment—affecting all our judgment—is a community concern.”
“The candles.” Hux spoke for the first time since Wyatt arrived, his voice rough from whiskey or darker thoughts. “Everyone’s talking about them. Half the town wants to light one and find their fated mate. The other half is terrified of what they might see.”
“And some of us saw nothing at all.” Beck’s observation was gentle, but Hux flinched anyway.
“What does that mean?” Wyatt asked. “The empty vision?”
“Unknown.” Aero’s clinical detachment had softened slightly. “There are several possibilities. The subject may not have a fated mate—rare, but not unheard of. The mate may be deceased. The bond may be blocked by external magic. Or…” He hesitated.
“Or?”
“Or the vision may be incomplete. The flame shows what it can access. If there’s interference—magical shielding, deliberate concealment—the image might not form properly.”
Hux stared into his whiskey. “So either I don’t have a mate, she’s dead, or a barrier is blocking the vision.” His laugh was bitter. “Great options.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Theo’s voice held quiet certainty. “Whatever’s happening with the candles, with the surge, we’ll find answers.”
“In the meantime,” Leo turned his attention back to Wyatt, “what’s your plan with the candle witch?”
“I don’t have a plan.”
“Bullshit.” Theo crossed his arms. “You’ve been investigating her for years. You’ve been obsessing over her background, her movements, her secrets. Now you’ve slept with her, your panther’s claiming territory, and you’re sitting here trying to pretend you don’t have a plan?”
“She’s concealing secrets.” The words came out before Wyatt could stop them.
“She has been since she arrived. Her background doesn’t add up.
Her reactions don’t match her story. And when I went to her cottage after—” He stopped, remembering the look on her face.
The fear underneath the careful composure.
“There’s trouble brewing. Something she won’t tell me. ”
“So find out what it is.” Leo’s suggestion was simple. Direct. “You’re the sheriff. Investigating is literally your job.”
“And she’s my—” Wyatt cut himself off, unable to finish the sentence.
“Your mate.” Theo finished it for him. “Which means protecting her is also your job. Whatever she’s hiding, whatever she’s scared of—that’s your fight now, whether you’ve claimed her or not.”
Wyatt’s panther rumbled with what felt unsettlingly like agreement.
“She won’t talk to me.” The admission cost him. “I went to her cottage. Asked what she saw in the candle. She refused to answer and closed the door in my face.”
“Closed the door in your face.” Delos’s grin was back. “I like her already.”
“Not helpful.”
“Very helpful. It means she’s not a pushover. You need someone who can push back against all that—” Delos gestured vaguely at Wyatt. “—broody intensity.”
“I’m not broody.”
“You’re extremely broody.” Leo nodded solemnly. “It’s concerning. We’ve been worried about you for years.”
“We have not been worried—”
“Aero made flashcards.” Delos pulled out his phone, scrolling through what appeared to be photographs. “Look. ‘How to Recognize When Wyatt is Experiencing Emotions.’ Step one: His jaw gets tighter. Step two: He gets even more silent. Step three—”
“There are no flashcards.” Aero’s tone was dust-dry, but warmth that might have been embarrassment flickered in his ancient eyes.
“There are absolutely flashcards. You made them after the Nerissa incident when Wyatt worked for thirty-six hours straight and wouldn’t admit he was exhausted.”
“I was fine.”
“You fell asleep standing up at the harbor.” Beck’s contribution was cheerful. “Theo had to catch you before you hit the water.”
“That was—” Wyatt stopped. Took a breath. “Can we please focus on the actual crisis instead of my alleged emotional deficiencies?”
“Your emotional deficiencies are the crisis.” Leo’s voice had gentled. “Look, I get it. I was exactly where you are—refusing to admit what my lion knew, fighting the bond because it felt like losing control.”
“And if she doesn’t want me?” The question tore out of him, raw and unguarded. “If she’s fleeing from danger—someone—and I’m just making it worse?”
The table went quiet.
“Is that what you think?” Theo’s voice was careful. “That she’s in danger?”
Wyatt thought about Narla’s cottage—the layers of wards, the defensive magic woven into every surface. The way she’d tensed when he mentioned her past. The fear he’d smelled underneath her composure, raw and primal as an animal cornered.
“I think she’s been fleeing for a long time.” His hand tightened on his beer. “And I think whatever it is, she won’t risk me getting involved.”
“Then get involved.” Leo replied. “If she’s in danger, she needs someone in her corner. Someone who can fight for her even when she won’t let him. That’s what mates do.”
“I don’t know how to—” Wyatt stopped. Let out a breath. “I’ve spent my entire adult life keeping people at a distance. I don’t know how to be what she needs.”
“None of us did.” Theo’s voice held quiet understanding. “You learn. You fuck up. You try again. And eventually, if you’re lucky, she decides you’re worth keeping anyway.”
Delos raised his beer. “To fucking up and trying again.”
“To mates who don’t give up on us even when we’re being idiots.” Beck clinked his glass against Delos’s.
“To the surge.” Aero’s contribution was unexpected, something that might have been warmth surfacing in his centuries-deep gaze. “For pushing us toward what we were too afraid to claim on our own.”
Even Hux raised his whiskey, though his expression remained shadowed. “To finding answers. Whatever they turn out to be.”
Wyatt looked around the table. At these men—alphas, betas, dragons, a mayor—who’d become what he’d never expected to have. A brotherhood, built on shared experience and mutual dysfunction.
His panther settled, just slightly. The beast recognized pack when it saw it, even if Wyatt’s human brain was slower to accept.
He raised his beer.
“To trying again.”
The glasses clinked. Wyatt drank, finally, letting the cold beer wash down his throat.
It wasn’t a solution.
Two hours later, Wyatt stepped out of the brewery into the cool night air.
The conversation had shifted to surge logistics—Aero’s research, Hux’s political damage control, Theo’s pack patrols reporting increased magical activity near the coast. Normal crisis management. The kind of problem Wyatt knew how to solve.
But underneath it all, his awareness of Narla pulsed steady as a heartbeat.
She was still at her cottage. Hadn’t moved in hours. He could feel her presence across the miles—not precise, not detailed, but undeniable.
A fixed point in the dark. His awareness of her as constant and involuntary as breath.
His panther stirred, restless.
“Not tonight.” He muttered it to the empty parking lot, earning a strange look from a passing couple. “She needs space.”
His phone buzzed. A text from Leo:
Stop arguing with your panther in the parking lot. People are staring.
Wyatt shoved the phone back in his pocket without responding. But as he walked to his car, words lodged in his brain.
If she’s in danger, she needs someone in her corner. Someone who can fight for her even when she won’t let him.
He didn’t know how to be that person. Had spent decades making sure he’d never have to try. But his panther was done waiting, and somewhere across town, his mate was sitting alone with secrets that were eating her alive.
Maybe it was time to stop investigating from a distance.
Maybe it was time to actually show up.
He had to see her. Not to demand answers or interrogate her secrets. Just to… be there. See what happened.
It wasn’t much of a plan.
But it was a start.